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E-book, Lesson Plan

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Understand the core values of American democracy and their relationship to the Declaration of Independence, their importance to a free and independent media, and their importance to the people who consume and produce information.

Examine the results of a recent survey on student use of the Internet and compare their personal use with the survey’s results.

Examine several examples of citizen journalism and evaluate its value to furthering the goals of a free press.

Examine the use of “new media” and citizen journalism during the post-election protests in Iran and comment on their potential for creating political change in Iran.

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This resource was reviewed using the Curriki Review rubric and received an overall Curriki Review System rating of 3, as of -0001-11-30.

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In this two-day lesson, students will look at the phenomenon of citizen
journalism and the role it played in Iran during massive public
protests that followed the June 12, 2009 presidential election. They
will examine how the use of Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are filling
in the news void left after the Iranian government barred mainstream
media coverage after the election. Students will take a critical look
at the effectiveness and reliability of this new media on reporting the
news and promoting political activism in Iran. They will then develop
their own citizen journalism report. This lesson provides students
ample background information on the historic roots of a free press and
the use of citizen journalism. Teachers can present this information in
ways and to whatever degree they feel appropriate for their students
and their class schedule.

In 1964, Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian educator and philosopher, coined
the phrase “The Medium is the Message.” He meant that it’s not so much
the content in a message that is important, but the medium or way in
which it is carried. Watching an event with sound and audio has greater
impact than reading about the same account. One of the earliest
examples of this in American media is Paul Revere’s etching of the Boston Massacre
which shows “defenseless” colonists being shot dead in the streets of
Boston by members of the British army. If one looks closely, it even
looks like Mr. Revere placed slight smiles (or at least expressions of
indifference) on the faces of the British soldiers.

Fast-forward
to the 20th century and televisions coverage of the Vietnam War and the
anti-war protests at home. Images sent to Americans’ living rooms of
seemingly endless combat and senseless brutality
generated an impression of a military policy in trouble. It also
presented an impression of a political party in disarray at the 1968 Democratic National Convention
as police clashed with anti-war protesters in the streets of Chicago.
Young people chanted, “The whole world is watching!” and a nation
asked, “How could the party in power continue to lead if it couldn’t
control its own convention?”
Fast-forward again to Iran after the
June 12, 2009 presidential election. Many Iranians believed there was
election fraud and took to the streets
in several of Iran’s major cities. The Iranian government reacted to
public outrage and placed a news blackout on foreign media outlets and
clamped down further on its own mass media. Public protests took place
day after day with increasing size and intensity. The Iranian
government and its surrogates reacted with brutal, but seemingly
constrained force, possibly trying to avoid another Tiananmen Square
massacre. Throughout the period “citizen journalists” using the “new
media” sent pictures and videos out of Iran to a anxious and alarmed
world. The Iranian government tried to block all cell phone and
Internet use, but wasn’t technologically sophisticated enough to
completely block out communication from cell phones and computers
through portals like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.
In the streets of Teheran, the killing of a young woman known to the
world as “Neta,” was caught on a cell phone camera. The image of her
bleeding body, gasping its last breath went “viral” as hundreds and
then thousands of cell phones and computers sent the story to millions
of viewers long before the mainstream media ever got to the story.